the people of the United States shall have no efficient or fair representation where the laws are made.

HOW TO CORRECT IT.

How is this object accomplished? The manner of accomplishing it is as simple as the thing is itself. Take the State of Kentucky, about which there is some discussion now, I believe, in the House of Representatives as to membership. She is entitled to nine members in that House. What is proposed is, that an elector in Kentucky may go to the election and vote for nine members, if he choose, to repsent his State in that House, giving each candidate one vote; or bestow his nine votes upon four, if he choose, or upon one, or upon any other number less than the whole. All the provision of law that is necessary is that the elector may vote for a less number of candidates than the whole number to be chosen, and that he may distribute his votes among that less number according to his judgment and discretion, enlightened or directed by his convictions of public duty. That is simple. It does not require a long explanation here; nor to the commonest-minded man in the country is it necessary to go into a protracted argument in order that he may comprehend it. The Senator from Kentucky remarked a short time ago that he was in favor of this reform if it were practicable; he was in favor of some improvement of this kind.

Mr. DAVIS. I did not mean to say that it was impracticable. I am very ready to receive information as to the practicability of it from the honorable Senator.

Mr. BUCKALEW. The Constitution of the United States says you may regulate the manner of electing members of Congress; you have interposed already by law to abolish the evils of the general ticket plan by which a majority could elect all the members from a State. Now what I ask you to do is in the same line of reform with that former legislation; that you shall go on, and instead of allowing any portion of the people of a State to be disfranchised, you shall permit them so to vote that they shall get actual representation.

Mr. DAVIS. If the honorable Senator will permit me, I will mention as an evidence of my friendliness to his principle, that I was a member of the House at the time that bill was passed, and voted for it; and I was then upon the Committee of Elections, and I made a report in favor of the bill. Some of the States then voted by general ticket, and some did not. Some voted by the district system, with districts entitled to send two or three or four Representatives, as was the case in the honorable Senator's State. That measure was deemed entirely a Whig measure; it was opposed by the Democracy; and there were four States, according to my best recollection, two of which I remember, Mississippi and New Hampshire, who refused obedience to the law, and continued to elect their Representatives upon the exploded general ticket system, defying the law of Congress. But their representation, elected on the general ticket system, was accepted in the next House by a majority. I merely make this statement of my being a friend to that measure to give some assurance to the honorable

Senator that I am not hostile to the principle of his proposition.

Mr. BUCKALEW. Well, sir, whatever may be said / of this measure, it is certainly practicable. It requires nothing but an act of Congress of half a dozen lines permitting an elector in any State choosing members of Congress to bestow his votes on any number of candidates less than the whole. Nothing further is necessary than that the votes so taken shall be reported, counted by the Secretary of the Commonwealth in a State, and the returns signed by the Governor in the usual way, and sent to the Speaker of the House of Representatives. The scheme requires no machinery; it requires no involved legislation; it involves no difficulty in putting it into execution.

ILLUSTRATIONS OF THE NEW PLAN.

Now, let me show how this scheme would work by a particular example. Take the case of Vermont, a State with sixty thousand voters, forty thousand of whom are members of the majority party, and twenty thousand of the minority. By act of Congress the existing apportionment law-that State is entitled to three members. The numbers I have stated are very nearly the exact numbers of voters in that State. Every one at a glance can see what ought to take place. The majority having forty thousand votes should choose two members of Congress from that State, and the minority having twenty thousand votes should choose one member. Then there would be just representation. Then there could be no complaint in any quarter. Then

our principle of the representation of the people would be applied in the particular case, and no human being can conceive of any argument or objection against the result.

This plan of cumulative voting renders just that result certain-renders it morally impossible that any other should take place; and why? Because the minority cumulating their votes upon a single candidate can give him sixty thousand votes; each elector giving his candidate three votes, it would count him sixty thousand. The forty thousand constituting the political majority in the State, if they attempt to vote for three candidates, can give them only forty thousand each. If they cumulate their votes upon two candidates, (which is what they are entitled to,) they can give them sixty thousand votes each; so that two men will be elected to Congress representing the majority and one man representing the minority, and it is impossible for either one of those political interests to prevent the other from obtaining its due share of representation.

Take the case of Pennsylvania, with twenty-four members. In that State at the last congressional election there were polled five hundred and ninetysix thousand one hundred and forty-one votes. The majority party polled three hundred and three thousand seven hundred and ninety and the minority two hundred and ninety-two thousand three hundred and fifty-one. It thus appears that there was a majority in favor of one political interest in that State at that congressional election, amounting to eleven thousand four hundred and thirty-nine votes. Multiplying, that by five-one-fifth of the popula

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tion ordinarily being the voters of the State-and you see that that surplus which one party possessed of votes over the other represents a population a little exceeding fifty-five thousand-less than one-half the number of inhabitants in the State entitled to a representative in Congress-so that this surplus of votes of one party over the other represents a minority fraction upon a ratio of apportionment of members of Congress to the State. The returns of that election (held in October last) were as follows:

PENNSYLVANIA CONGRESSIONAL DISTRICTS.

Ratio of votes for a Representative, according to votes polled... 24,839